4 months to Bloomington

This Monday, the great Luke Ski announced the comedy music schedule for Marscon 2010 held in Bloomington, MN the first weekend in March.

Unlike last year, I am very pleased that the former Twin Cities group the Nick Atoms were named the guest of honor as they are doing one last show together. It is also FTW that Schaffer the Darklord and Throwing Toasters (along with the podcast winning radio show Dr. Floyd) will be making their first Marscon appearance traveling from NYC and LA respectively for the show.

However, there will also be artists at Marscon whose music and personality clash with me which is starting to become more common than I want it to be as people who are considerably younger than me are joining our group of friends and are making music.

This chart reflects my personal opinion of the artists currently on the schedule.



I can not thank enough the great Luke Ski for his hard work in bringing awesome music to the convention and for the convention itself for allowing it to become the place to travel in March to see many of the best artists in comedy music perform.

Go Yankees?

From what little baseball playoff talk I have heard this year, most people agree that they want someone other than the Yankees to hoist the trophy once this seemingly endless playoff end. In the three sports where playoffs are best of 7 series, I am getting increasingly disgusted by how games are spread out in an attempt to maximize tv ratings usually at the expense of the quality and integrity of the games.

As I posted last year, since there is no personal team that made the playoffs, I am rooting for the Yankees to win the title since they were the best team in the better league for the 2009 season and because I picked the Yankees to beat the Phillies for the title after picking all six division winners correctly. (Yes, even St. Louis. I got a lot of flack stating in March that the Cubs were only going to win 85 games and not make the playoffs.)

I had in the past rooted for the underdog in the playoffs but for a while it got to the point in baseball where the lesser teams would win playoff series and titles as explained in the chart:



I used the 20 games above .500 barrier to determine whether or not a division winner is in my opinion worthy of a title. When looking at past regular season records, I confirmed that from 2000-2006 five of the seven champions either failed to win a division title or 91 games.

Also from 2000-2008, only 2001 had two league champions that won 91 games and its division and in two of those years, 2002 and 2006, neither team had won 91 games or its division title.

I am very pleased that 2009 marked the first season since the current format was established in 1995 that the two wild card teams and the one division champion that did not win 91 games, St. Louis, all lost in the first round.

Family Circus style driving, part 6

Heading to my sister's house in Frankfort is easier than it used to be after the North-South tollway (now called the veterans tollway) was extended south to interstate 80. Before, I had to take the Tri State Tollway, exit at 95th and Harlem and drive 12 miles on the street. On average taking this route saves me 10 minutes which for me is well worth the extra $2 in round trip tolls.

Last month while driving there with my wife and daughter, my wife told me it was the first time she was in a car that correctly exited from interstate 355 to interstate 80 toward my sister's house. I asked her what she did wrong and she stated she took interstate 80 the wrong direction and only discovered her error when she saw the next exit three miles down the road.

Having done that earlier in the year myself at the 355/55 exit as I posted about in the summer, I can understand even if this exit is simple with traffic going left exits left and traffic going right exits right. However, she told me she did that three different times.



And she just told me she as I was putting this entry together that she would be ok driving home tonight from the Park West theatre (about 30 miles from my house) if necessary. Er, ... no.

Non championship sports part 3

As the days get shorter and the chill starts to be felt in the air, it is time for the NHL season to begin. As with the previous two charts, there is one team that has gone significantly longer without a title than any others. Here is a chart showing their title odds since winning their last title in 1961:



Due to expansion, adding teams from the World Hockey Association which folded in 1979, continuing conference and division changes and even a couple of teams folding, the odds changed 7 times in 16 seasons. Since 8 teams from each conference made the playoffs each year, working out odds from uneven number of teams in divisions was unnecessary.

Unlike the Lions who went 0-16 last year and the Cubs who for most people were a disappointment in 2009 in spite of my correct prediction in March of an 85 win non playoff season, the Blackhawks are many experts' popular pick to win the conference and cup title for 2009-2010. Four players from that team were on the cover of the ESPN magazine hockey preview issue. They have come a long way from being a city joke less than 2 years ago. My only concern about the team for this upcoming season is their goal tender who can struggle against good teams as long as they remember the same thing most NHL fans know. Shoot high against him.

Non championship sports part 2

Though the Chicago Cubs are doing better now that their overpriced corner outfielders are no longer active, they are all but mathematically eliminated from the playoffs at this time. Therefore, unless the Cubs either overcome an 8 1/2 game division deficit with 9 games to play or overcome 4 other teams to win the wild card berth, this chart will reflect their failure:



One hundred times in a row a team other than the Cubs will win the title. (Note: There was no title awarded in 1994 and even though the Cubs were 16 games out of a playoff spot when the 1994 season was ended by a strike in early August, that year does not count)

Through 1961, the odds of the Cubs winning a World Series was the same as four tossed coins landing on heads. With more teams added since then and with creating three divisions and including a wild card (which for all the NL Central teams increases the odds), the mathematical odds of winning the NL pennant is currently equal to drawing a non suicide king from a full deck of playing cards and of the World Series that plus a coin flip.

To determine the odds of a team not winning a title for 100 seasons I had to multiply (15/16) 53 times, (19/20) 7 times, etc. That comes out to 199-1.

For not winning the NL pennant since 1945, I did the similar thing of multiplying (7/8) 16 times, (9/10) 7 times, etc. Those odds came out to 392-1.

bonus

From the same mind that brought you the epilogue to Ghost where a few years later a lonely Molly Jensen takes a lethal dose of sleeping pills in an effort to meet Sam since she did not want to wait 40 more years but by killing herself ends up joining those who killed him in eternal damnation comes the sequel to the 47th animated feature from Walt Disney.

Meet Mr. Robinson's Destiny

The story of a young orphan named Goob who after making a title winning catch develops the confidence to become the most successful businessman in the world by executing a hostile takeover of the corporation formed by his childhood friend. However, while going through the lab, he discovered plans for an idea that was never produced and decides he wants to leave his mark on the world by developing the DOR-15 device.

However, there are flaws and unlike his childhood friend who has the humility to consider it a failure, Goob continues development of the project until it takes over the corporation and the world.

Exiled and in hiding, Cornelius Robinson with his son Wilbur decide that to save the world they must use their time machine to go back to the point where he as a kid named Lewis, he helped Goob make the winning play and prevent that from happening.

After that is done, Cornelius advises Lewis to try to help Goob overcome the despair of his failure but when that did not work, it was agreed that Goob needed to go into a mental hospital where he spent the rest of his life sedated and often restrained.

Inspired by death

On my internet radio show (www.dementiaradio.org Thursday evenings starting at 7PM CDT) I sometimes have problems figuring out what songs to play. I then realized by paying attention to news, I could come up with something to play and go from there.

Of course deaths are commonplace this week and because of Henry Gibson I played something based on Laugh in and the Blues Brothers since he was in both of them. I would have played the song "Lybian in a Jet Plane" for recently deceased Mary from Peter Paul and Mary but realized I did not have it. For Patrick Swayze, I played "Mr Ghost is coming to Town" since the song "Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas" does not work as well in September.

Anyway, the movie Ghost has an ending that I really do not like. NOTE: Spoiler alert for the rest of the post




Ok, after the Swayze character ascends into heaven, there is a young attractive woman who knows for sure the man she loves but saw wastefully murdered still exists but she knows she can not see him until she dies which on average is at least 40 more years. Also looking at a scene from earlier in the movie, if she dies in her 70s she will ascend as an old woman while her dead husband will be the same way he perished.

Personally I believe the character decides after a few years to try to join her dead husband but by killing herself condemns her to the hell and joins the people responsible for killing her husband in the first place.

Being a sports fan, I have watched many sports movies. Some of them have endings that ruin it for me. I am only talking about movies that I liked and not Major League II, or Caddyshack II where I found myself rooting against the hero or movies whose endings might not be sports accurate but still work like Happy Gilmore. Here are my top 5 likable sports movies with bad endings:

5: Wildcats. I liked the idea of a suburban divorced mother becoming a coach of a inner city high school football team and thought the story went well as she first had to gain the respect of the team and then get them better.

In the big game, it came down to a defensive stand and a field goal attempt by their high class school opponent to win the championship game. Somehow, the big, fat player from the inner city school who had to join the team to avoid getting into trouble made it to the other sideline and got insulted by the coach. He then made it back to his team's sideline and demanded to get back into the game and was put in the game as they were lining up for the field goal . I figured he was going to plow over the line and cause a shadow to fall over the holder as he blocked the kick. That would make sense. He actually jumped 5 feet into the air to block the kick and his teammate recovered the ball and returned it for a winning touchdown.

4: Taking Care of Business. A long time suffering Cubs fan (what Cubs fan isn't?) is in jail but not scheduled to be released two days after the Cubs World Series game in which he won tickets. So he gets his fellow inmates to "hold him hostage" as he sneaks out. He not only attends the game but makes a spectacular catch of a Mark Grace tape measure home run and then returns to prison in disguise as nothing happened.

First off, Mark Grace tape measure home run? Anyway, wanted people have been arrested at ballparks for appearing on a kiss cam in the ball park during a regular season game. Now we are supposed to believe that someone who is already in the news from being held hostage in a prison and makes a spectacular catch of a home run in a World Series game does not get identified by anyone other than his fellow inmates?

3: Mighty Ducks D3. I liked it more than D2 which also could have made the list. The Ducks as a group get a scholarship to a private high school for hockey but have trouble adjusting to a new coach and the varsity team. In the annual varsity vs. jv match up, both teams decide to let the game decide the school's nickname and with a last second goal, the Ducks win.

First of all, I liked the fact that the Ducks decided to listen to their new coach and adapt their style to give themselves a chance vs the varsity team and the game was scoreless until almost the end where two Ducks players were penalized giving the varsity team a 5 on 3 advantage which in hockey is huge. Normally, teams shorthanded by two players just try to keep the puck out of their net. The Ducks' captain steals a pass and goes the other way to try to win the game but gets caught by two varsity players. So he passes the puck behind him where a defense man joins the play and scores the winning goal.

What is wrong with that? The defense man who scored the goal was the goalie in the previous two movies and is fat. For him to score the winning goal, he would have needed to beat three varsity players down the ice after skating around frantically for 30 seconds in the penalty kill. No way.

2: Rookie of the Year. A ten year old Cubs fan injures his shoulder then discovers he can throw a ball over 100 MPH so the Cubs sign him to be their relief pitcher. In the game to clinch the division title after their starting pitcher blows his arm out, the kid falls and his arm returns to normal but he still retires the side with trickery to win the game.

In that inning, the kid used the hidden ball trick for the first out and a softball pitch for the final out after the batter realized the kid lost his fastball. The second out turned into a child's game that made me think why couldn't the writers make the kid's arm return to normal after one out.

Also, the scene after the division game shows that the team won the title. Though possible, it is very unlikely that a team after losing a starting pitcher and the closer would win two playoff series especially since the team was going nowhere before signing the kid.

1: Necessary Roughness. A top college football team was severely penalized for violations and forced to recruit walk on players and a former high school star quarterback who never got the chance to play in college to play the schedule. Due to academic problems and an administrator who wanted the team disbanded, the team was forced to have their players play both offense and defense and they got beaten badly until the end where the upset the number one team in the nation.

I enjoyed the movie especially Rob Schneider announcing. It was a fun movie. However, defeating the number one team in the nation with a squad of scrubs playing both ways? For some reason, no one on the team got hurt during the grueling season played on a hard AstroTurf field until the next to last play where they faked an extra point and completed the pass to get the two point conversion on a play where someone blocked below the waist which should have drawn a penalty anyway. It left me shaking my head in disgust.